Human movement bias is more consistent than almost anyone expects, and Samantha Yammine is here to explain why the research is harder to dismiss than it looks. Studies in Spain and Japan, with children, adults, individuals, and crowds, all point to the same result: people veer left, and they can't explain why.

Handedness doesn't account for it. Driving conventions don't account for it. Walls and social norms don't account for it. The researchers ruled them out systematically, and the bias remained. What's left is something that appears to be intrinsic, without yet having an explanation.

The finding has real implications for how cities and venues move people, and a genuinely strange implication for anyone who's ever stood up from a chair and turned the wrong way.

Topics: left-turn bias, crowd movement, human behaviour research, urban planning, cognitive bias

GUEST: Samantha Yammine | http://samanthayammine.com | @‌science.sam

Originally aired on 2026-07-03